01.14.13

Cablevision chief James Dolan has deep respect for New York Knicks history ; witness, for instance the way he’s keeping the likes of NYK legends Allan Houston and John Starks employed as living, breathing monuments to past Garden glories. In more recent times, however, Dolan — perhaps taking a tip from his blues guitar peer Eric Clapton — has come to realize it’s not nearly enough to pay Baron Davis a king’s ransom to do absolutely nothing. No, real dedication to the cause of documenting Knicks history is all about preserving and archiving even the smallest of moments. Say for instance, your franchise player making verbal threats towards a competitor who has insulted his estranged wife? The Newark Star-Ledger’s Dave D’Alessandro has further details :

For reasons only he can explain — but probably wouldn’t, at least not without an act of Congress — Jim Dolan made a few MSG Network employees perform a surreptitious duty during the Knicks’ game against Chicago on Friday night.

Two audio technicians were stationed at two corners of the court — one a few feet just behind the Knicks bench, the other diagonally opposite — and they were holding those umbrella-shaped contraptions known as parabola microphones, which fed the audio into a DAT recorder on the truck on the loading dock.

These guys had one directive from Dolan: Record every syllable Carmelo Anthony utters and absorbs while he’s on the court and on the bench, the Madison Square Garden CEO ordered them, and send the tape directly to me.

Of Anthony’s being so easily baited by Kevin Garnett last week, D’Alessandro likens to the former to “an immature player with a sack of sand between his ears and an empty chamber where his heart should be.”